Page 65 of Trouble Me
“Do you know Tara Moore?” Shane countered.
Shit, this was not what she needed tonight. Emma blinked and shook her head slightly, trying to figure out why he would ask her about the town’s biggest gossip queen whose family hated her family going back decades.
“Yeah, I know Tara. She doesn’t like me very much.” Tilting her head, she studied him with one brow raised. “How doyouknow Tara?”
The stare he leveled at her was icy. “Tara and I had a nice chat at the Silver Moon Café a little while ago.” Emma would’ve been burning with jealousy if she didn’t know Shane better.
“Really? So, what does Tara have to do with me lying to you?”Oh my God.As the realization hit, her lips parted and her stomach began to roll, leaving her nauseous.
Tara knew about her past. Those in town who knew about her and her family’s troubles had enough class not to go around spreading her business. Except for anyone with the last name Moore. Some long-ago spat between the two families had grown into a long-simmering dislike between them. But hell if Emma knew the reason for it all. It didn’t matter why. All she knew was that Tara knew the one piece of business about her that could detrimentally alter Emma’s future.
This time, it was Shane who studied Emma. “I’d say by the look on your face you know exactly what I’m talking about. Our whole relationship was, and is, a lie.” He advanced on her, and now his eyes burned bright with anger. “I confided in you about Marlene. Told you about how she was an addict and how that fucked me up for a while. And you never said a word. You never said you were just like Marlene. An addict.”
Terror tightened her chest to the point of pain. She vainly tried to rub it away. She swallowed hard before she could speak. Tears threatened to fall but she blinked them back.“You’re right. I should have told you.” He growled and turned away, pushing a hand through his hair.“But I was scared. I was scared of what I felt for you when I knew what we had was short-term. And I was scared you’d never hire me. And I needed the job in the worst way. I still do.”
He paced the width of the kitchen, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing the back of his neck. Stopping, he pinned her with a look. “Were you ever going to tell me? As your employer, were you going to tell me? Especially working for a company that produces alcohol. I mean, legally you don’t have to tell me. But morally, Emma? Do you know how much of a liability that could be?”
She bit her lip and closed her eyes. “I thought of that. But Shane, I’ve been sober for two years.” She blew out a breath and crossed the room to the table, her hands shaking with desperation. “Can you please sit and give me a chance to explain?” she asked, her voice strangled.
He let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, you’ve ‘told’ me plenty already. What I want is the truth.”
“What I told you before was the truth. I just didn’t mention everything.”
“So, it was your version of the truth, huh?” His voice was laced with a venom she’d never heard from him before.
Desperation clawed at her throat and this time, she couldn’t stop the tears from blurring her vision. “Shane, please. I’ll tell you everything. Whatever you want to know.”
He relented and jerked out a chair before sitting down. He crossed his arms again, effectively shutting her out. “Fine. Go ahead. Explain away, Emmaline.”
She sat down next to him and clasped her hands on the table. A couple of breaths steadied her. “The night I signed away my professional life, I drank myself into oblivion. I went out with some friends under the guise of a celebration that I had made millions that day. It wasn’t what I wanted, though, and I was distraught. But I saw no other way to help my mother out of debt.” The tears she’d held back since she’d opened the bank letter finally rolled down her cheeks, but her voice stayed steady. “My friends drove me home and that’s the last I remember. Noah found me the next morning at the bottom of the stairs in my house. I was barely breathing and busted up pretty good.”
Shane cursed under his breath and shifted in his chair, but she continued. “When I woke from my coma three weeks later, they told me they had to pump my stomach. In addition to the alcohol, I had a high concentration of painkillers in my bloodstream from where I popped several Vicodin through the night.” She looked down at her hands that were clenched into fists, her knuckles white. Emma forced them to open. “I didn’t try to kill myself. I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t do that to my family. In my soul I knew I’d done enough damage to them, I couldn’t add suicide to my list of sins. I just...” She paused to swallow the knot in her throat. “It wasn’t the first time I’d been wasted and high on pills. But I was careless.”
She wiped away the tears. “Anyway, once I came out of the coma and could be moved, my family sent me to rehab. It was the only choice I had to avoid losing my family. This was my last resort.”
She looked up at him and his eyes were unreadable. His shoulders were tight and he was as still as a statue. But the coldness that had been in his eyes before gave way to something else she couldn’t decipher.
“While I was in rehab, my mother died. Pancreatic cancer, so she went quick. I didn’t even know she was sick.” She blinked back the fresh tears in her eyes. “I was devastated to lose her before I could show her I was truly better. And then I found out she had no life insurance because she had to cash it in to pay off my father’s gambling debts. And she had debt from the B&B so the only money left was mine from the sale of my business. That went quick, dwindling away with the mountain of medical bills. All I had left was this house and the land. And my sobriety.”
Emma looked him in the eye and moved closer to him. She needed to make him understand, even if her best intentions fell short. She reached for his hands, and when he didn’t pull away, she held them in hers. They were strong and capable, kind and sensual. His wide palms and long fingers dwarfed her petite hands. She studied them and how they melded around hers.
As if made just for her.
Emma raised her head and looked Shane square in the eyes. “I’m an alcoholic, Shane. Two years ago, I found my way to true sobriety.”
Shane raised a brow. “True sobriety?”
Emma nodded. “For me, that means being sober and actuallywantingto be sober. Not the kind of sober where I don’t drink, but wish I were, and being so miserable because I’m not drinking. I had long periods of that kind of sobriety. But it wasn’t real.” She looked away, out into the backyard, where the darkness was relieved by a full moon. “It was always for something else or someone else.”
“As though you were living life on someone else’s agenda?”
She turned her gaze back to his, nodding her head slowly. “Exactly. I had to find my own way, when I was ready.” She rolled her lips inward to ward off more tears, and was only slightly successful. “I know I should have said something to you, especially after you told me about Marlene and all that you went through with her. I’m so very sorry that you had to deal with that, and that she lost her fight with her demons.” Emma squeezed his hand. “I fight mine tooth and nail every day. And I win. And I plan to win every day for the rest of my life, even if I have to do it alone.”
“What about the rest of your family?” he asked gruffly.
She brushed away more tears. “Yeah, I have them, too. Please understand. I didn’t keep my situation from you to hurt you or create problems professionally.” She gave him a soft smile, and his posture relaxed slightly. “You are a surprise to me, Shane Kavanaugh. An exception to all my rules. You trouble me because I didn’t expect you to be so important. You mean more to me than just mind-blowing sex.”
One side of his mouth quirked in a half smile, causing her heart to lift in hope that they could get past this.
